My two-year-old son came running across the playground shouting "Daddy, LOOK!" My husband and I stared in horror as we saw him waving his discovery in the air- a used syringe.
As I froze, my husband tore after him and frantically grabbed it. Seconds later, my son toddled off unscathed. And I sat there and stared at my husband's bleeding hand.
We had moved to Scarborough, Ontario when the area had not been so drug-riddled - but it was quickly going downhill and becoming more unsafe. Our plan had been to save our money so we could move to a better area and raise a family. But finances were tight, and ten years and two kids later, we were still there.
The doctor advised that my husband start an intense antiretroviral treatment. These same drugs are offered to women who have been raped in order to minimize the chance of contracting HIV. You need to start them within 72 hours of the possible infection - otherwise, they are ineffective. There’s only a small percentage of chance that you can contract the disease through a needle. Do you play the odds? Do you take the chance and do nothing? When your life is no longer your own – when it is entwined with a wife and children – taking a risk is no longer an option.
The physical side effects of the drugs were severe - and less than 30% of people stick it out and finish the six week cycle. The financial effects were barely tolerable since the drugs are painfully expensive –almost two thousand dollars. But we were completely unprepared for the emotional rollercoaster that was ahead.
They don't tell you that your family will be turned upside down with fear and anxiety. That your kids won't understand why daddy spends days throwing up, or why he yells at them to leave when he cuts himself by mistake. That you’ll wake up every morning with blood on the pillows from the incessant mouth bleeds that go hand-in-hand with the meds. They don’t tell you that when your kids jump into your bed for a morning hug that you’ll frantically check for blood before you let them lie down – and then you can’t wait until they leave so your stomach can unclench.
The simplest thing will cause you angst. His razor you used to borrow that sits on the shelf in the shower is a daily reminder and you no longer can use it. And even though you know that HIV can’t be transmitted by mouth, every kiss is scrutinized and no longer enjoyable. There is no more sex without a condom – but you constantly fear the condom will break, so you end up avoiding sex completely because the emotional turmoil is too much to handle.
One minute you’ll hate your husband for being so careless in the park that day; the next minute overwhelmingly grateful that he possibly saved your son from a lifetime of suffering.
At the end of six weeks - as you sit together numbly in that doctor's office with the staff triple-gloved drawing blood – you discover that 24 hours feels like 24 years. You'll have a brief fling with relief as the tests come back negative, and then live in a cloud of terror for the next six months until that final blood test confirms if either the drugs, or mere chance, saved your family an uncertain future from just that brief moment in the park.
When those long months are over, you’ll run to the phone every time it rings - waiting for results that will either change your lives irrevocably, or make you cry with relief. Those months, those days, those minutes- they drop away and cease to exist once you hear the good news. You cry; you laugh; you kiss with abandon; you hug your kids so hard you try to absorb them.
We eventually moved to our dream house away from the city. Last week my son ran through a busy playground shouting "Daddy, LOOK!" and all I could think about was that fateful day three years ago. I'm sure the woman next to me was wondering why my husband and I stood there silently hugging for the next ten minutes.
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